Road casualties in Crawley 200-2010 plotted onto a map

First of all I must heartily recommend this post from the As Easy As Riding A Bike blog. It is an analysis of road deaths and injuries in Horsham, based on information from the ITO website’s road casualty map. The rest of the blog is well worth a look too.

It would be interesting to see the same sort of interpretation for Crawley. If anybody does that, let me know and send me a link. If anybody wants to do the work and doesn’t have a website I’ll put it on here for them – I don’t have the inclination to do it myself at the moment.A couple of initial thoughts though. As with Horsham, the vehicle occupant deaths are predominantly on the larger roads like dual carriageways and the motorway and pedestrian deaths feature much older people. The mainjunctions of the A23 feature heavily as locations of fatal and non-fatal incidents. Cycle incidents have a couple of major hotspots at the flyover roundabout and at juntions around County Mall.

As you might expect, vehicle incidents cluster along the A23 although, to be honest, with all the reports in the local papers it would not have been surprising to see even more. Reading the locals you do sometimes get the impression that a teenager crashes their hatchback every week on the A23.

As ever, the data has been out there somewhere for ages, but it becomes so much easier to grasp visually. The map could be a useful tool for council planners to prioritise improvements, for the police to prioritise speed clampdowns and for pressure groups like the CTC to back up their cases. Just at a glance you can see that Martyrs Avenue is an accident hotspot (all those parked cars?) and that the Balcombe Road is one you want to be very careful crossing.

I am interested in the motorcycle incidents though. The ratio of fatal to non-fatal incidents is really low. For every fatal vehicle incident there are loads of non-fatal incidents. For cycle and pedestrian deaths are are fewer non-fatal incidents but for motorcycles there are relatively very few non-fatal incidents. I suspect this is down to reporting. Cycle and pedestrian incidents will get reported far less often than minor car incidents where you need a police report to help with insurance claims. As for the motorbikes, is itreally because there are very few incidents but a huge chance of an incident being fatal? It seems more likely that bikers just don’t want to report minor incidents.

I’m just glad I don’t cycle to Manor Royal from Tollgate Hill any more. The route I used to take is littered with green triangles!

Just the other day somebody was telling me how somebody at the county council (I think it was a member, but might have been an officer) was saying how potholes are not really such a big problem because modern cars have suspensions that can cope with them, and they work as traffic calming.  OK, except not everybody has a modern car and the roads are also used by motorbikes, scooters and bicycles which certainly can’t cope with unexpected holes.

That is the perspective this site comes from – it is being pushed by Chris Hoy who would know a thing or two about cycling.  Potholes were one reason why I stopped cycling to work.  Not the main reason – that would be either fitness, the weather or the recurring groin abscess – but certainly a reason.

Looks like a not-too-bad use of the Google maps API, but I’m thinking the time must have come for a similar site that makes use of the location awareness of modern mobile phones.  You could use an iPhone app or mobile web site, attach a photo, give details and attach a photo and let the phone give the map co-ordinates.  It’s so obvious I suspect it already exists but I am not aware of it.

If your nocturnal habits are based on endurance, Wilma-10 could be the perfect choice to escort you through the night.  Using the latest 920 lumen Wilma lamp unit with integrated PCS switch unit, Wilma-10 comes with an ultra-lightweight 10.0Ah Li-ion bottle battery which provides an amazing run time of 5 hours 30 minutes.  Includes the Micro charger for rapid recharging.

Fnarr fnarr, as Finbarr Saunders would say.

A few pages before that there is a saddle that costs an incredible £225, which goes by the name of “Scratch Nack“.  I don’t know about anyone else, but for £225 I would want a saddle that prevented nack scratches rather than boasting about them!

Jokes aside, it is a wide range, and although some parts are ridiculously expensive (i.e. more than the price of my entire bike) it does contain cheap stuff too, and I am a bit tempted by a particular set of pedals in there.  The place is just down the road from where Charlie got his motorbike in Redhill, so I might pop in there.

I certainly won’t go to their website though.  It has to be the most feature- and content-free commercial site I have ever seen.  All it has is their address, phone number and email address. Plus a link to the web designers – whose motto/slogan is “no nonsense websites”.  Very apt.

I think I shall celebrate by taking the car in tomorrow.

In retrospect, starting some sort of excercise after so many years of sloth might have been better done when we were not suddenly experiencing hot weather.  I would have been so happy to see drizzle today.  I still haven’t settled on a preferred route yet.  I have gone four different ways already.  Straight down Pease Pottage Hill and then up Brighton Rd in Southgate looks like being a good one though.

The big problem is finding a way home that is not too arduous: difficult when you live on top of a hill.  I have tried approaching home various ways, but you just can’t get here without climbing somewhere.  Still not sure if its worse to have a long gentle hill or a short, steep one.

I wonder how long it will take before I can take either in my stride?  It used to take me a week to get used to cycling each year, but then I was in my twenties.  I have felt myself remembering in disbelief what it felt like as a teenager. Remember how you would just cycle everywhere for hours and it never felt like hard work at all?

Tonight I used my car for the first time since Thursday and that felt strange.  Its only 1 litre but I kept getting impressed that it could actually do 30 mph+ going uphill.

Almost immediately I was annoyed by those grippy harness things on the pedals that you are supposed to put your feet into.  Maybe its something you can get used to, but I just couldn’t.  The problem is that gravity makes them hang down, but to get your foot in you really need them on top.  I ended up letting them hang down and then got annoyed by them clipping the floor sometimes. I made a mental note to either get used to them really quickly or take them off.

The real problem was the height of the saddle.  It seemed OK at first, but after a few hundred metres I decided that it could do with coming up a bit as I could not really extend my legs properly.  When I stopped to adjust it I found that, unlike my old bike and the various kids’ bikes over the years, you need an allen key, which I didn’t have on me.  After a couple of kilometres it became less an irritation and more of a real problem because it was dead uncomfortable.

When I got home my legs were killing me.  Part of that is obviously down to not being used to exercise, but I hope part of it is down to not being able to stretch my legs properly.  Back home I dug out an allen key and moved the saddle up.  I think I’ll go for a little spin tomorrow to make sure it feels good.  Today I also removed those harness things.  I’m sure some people swear by them, but I’m a little set in my ways and far happier doing without.

I think I’ll wait to see if the cycling causes any weight loss and firming up before I inflict the lycra shorts on everyone else though…

As if on cue, it started raining this evening.

The whole Cycle2work scheme has gone very smoothly.  On Monday I filled out the paperwork, on Wednesday the voucher/letter of collection arrived in the post, today I went into Halfords and picked out a bike and all sorts of accessories, and tomorrow I collect the bike.

The way it works, I felt like it wasn’t my own money I was spending so when choosing accessories I wasn’t asking myself ‘which is the cheapest lock/helmet/pump?‘ but ‘which is the most suitable or best lock/helmet/pump?‘ so I ended up with (I hope) stuff that will last well.  My voucher was for £450 and the bike I wanted was £299.99 so I had a budget of £150.01 for accessories.  I picked out some mudguards, lights, a pump, a helmet, a backpack and a lock and went to tot it all up to see if I had bust the budget or still had more to go: it came to £149.94 so in the absence of anything on sale for 7p I stopped there.

Actually I still have another fifty quid to spend because Halfords are giving you accessories to that value if you buy a bike costing more than £250, so I’ll get a hi-vis waistcoat and some other bits tomorrow.  With that extra offer added to the savings on income tax, VAT and NI I will end up with £500-worth of stuff costing me less than £250 – spread over 18 months.

So a real bargain, and with any luck I’ll end up fitter (and slimmer) as a result.  What could possibly go wrong?

Everyone else was in a minor panic, thinking I was maybe not coming in.  When the boss asked why I didn’t phone to say I would be in late I had to point out that we are on flexi-time and I just chose, for once, to arrive at the late end of our range of start time rather than the early end.  It not that I am indispensible or anything, I think its just that everyone is used to me already being there when they turn up – I know I am.  It threw me out for the whole half day, not being able to mentally prepare myself for the day ahead, deal with a few e-mails, etc. before everyone else is around.

After work I went over to Halfords to look at bikes.  I am probably going to go for a Carrera Vulcan and then spoil the effect by having mudguards and a rear pannier, but now I know how much to ask for from the cycle2work scheme – £400 to £450 to allow for all those accessories.  Must make a point of doing all the paperwork on Monday, because the scheme only runs until Friday.

After that I went to soak up the misery while having an afternoon breakfast in the cafe at Broadfield.  The misery was all due to the establishment being resolutely Portugese.  I think they were all still suffering the emotional fallout from getting kicked out of the Euros by the Germans.

Highlight of the day was finding out that Chrystal is going to take me to see Paul Weller at K2 in Crawley. Apparently Radio Mercury were running some sort of competition and she had to approach somebody in the town centre to get the tickets.  Brilliant.  I had been thinking about getting tickets for this show, and now I’m glad I was slow in getting around to it.

If I went to buy a new bike I know I would end up with the cheapest in the shop again – a bike is not my highest priority and they all look the same, so why fork out £300+ when there is something for £70?  That is the false economy I would probably make, but with this scheme you get a bike, plus accessories, and pay over 18 months, before tax.  For a higher-rate taxpayer than can work out at less than £15 a month for a really good bike – and you can save that much in petrol just by not driving to work.

The scheme my company is running expires at the end of next week so I’ll have to make my mind up quickly.   On the one hand its a real bargain, saves the planet a little bit, and would be good for whatever is left of my cardio-vascular system.  On the other hand… its going to be hard work on those hills,  a slightly longer journey, the chance of getting to work all sweaty – unless I get mowed down by a truck on the way.

It might be an excuse to start using the iRiver again though…  the more I weigh up the pros and cons the better it sounds.